Biography

Aa a multi-disciplinary artist, I have designed costumes, makeup, masks and puppets for Margolis Brown ADAPTORS, OffLeash Area and Penny Freeh Dances. My visual work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including New York’s Museum of Art and Design and the Hakone museum in Japan. I have cultivated my vision as an actor, director and theater-maker for over 3 decades, specializing in actor-generated work. As a featured performer and core company member with Margolis Brown ADAPTORS Company for 12 years, I was an integral part of the development of all their work. Since then I have worked as an actor-collaborator with Off-Leash Area, Skewed Visions and Flaneur Productions. Recent directing/writing projects include NOT UNTIL THE FAT LADY SINGS (Right Here Showcase), BLUE/DOLL/HOUSE/BEARD (Red Eye’s WIP) , HEROCYCLE (FTF Works), SHE MYTH (Big Wingz Productions) and IT IS SHE WHO I SEE (Interference Arts). I am the recipient of a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and a 2000 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Assistance Grant. I teach for the University of Minnesota’s BA Theatre program.

Artist Statement

My approach to making visual works of art and to making theater is similar: embodied, experiential and improvisational. I work interactively with materials or actors to discover the shape of my creative impulses; they are revealed through a dialog with whatever media I am working with. My best work comes from “listening.” Over the years I have worked as an actor, director, writer, dancer, mime, mask-maker, costume designer, bead sculptor and fiber artist. Theater offers me a vehicle to bring all of these modes together synergistically – and to bring them to life.

I seek to make theater that is mythic in this sense: theater that probes archetypes (ancient and current) to release the vital energies that are contained in them. I am looking deeply into story to find creative images of the self that help us understand our own growth, and our place in community. I am passionately curious about the relationship between body, soul and community - Jungian modes of knowing the self and of placing the self within culture. I create from the body as a potent form of “active imagination,” hoping to unleash images and energies deep in the psyche that have the power to speak universally. In the studio I improvise with my body, my voice, text and objects to find the unexpected image or the perplexing contradiction. My work thrives in the tension between opposites.

Sometimes I start with a text. Sometimes I animate an image or improvise with objects. Sometimes I create objects and work with them. I am exploring how dream images and mythical archetypes reveal and integrate parts of the self. I am interested in story: what is true, digging through layers to find the truth, exploring deconstruction, associative image and fantasy as a means of interacting creatively with personal narrative.